What is your opinion on the Fairness Doctrine?

No. But it sure is a useful bogeyman for the right wing to incessantly bring up to scare their idiot cultist followers. Like “Death panels” and “Acorn”

It is anything but fair.

It would serve to chip away at free speech as well as free markets.

Liberals are just pissed because there’s a far smaller market for their message on radio and want govermnent to step in and artificially influence marketshare.

@Qingu, It’s my understanding that Fluther rules mandate that a first comment be a serious one. ‘Idiot cultist’ and ‘bogeyman’ doesn’t suggest seriousness to me. Such inflamatory language is better suited to whitehouse.gov

@proXXi I find @Qingu‘s response fairly serious. Perhaps biased, but not altogether false.

It seems to me like those who already have freedom of speech are the ones who first oppose it.

It seems that those who already have a smaller voice are the ones who get ignored when it comes to matters that would support them. I guess we should just keep on ignoring the little guy and hope and wish that things will become equal.

I know I’m going to get trashed for saying that

Anyhow I haven’t decided on the matter as I just read a brief statement about what it is even about. Just an initial thought after reading the immediate reactions to the question.

Edit to add: Having read the statement just below me I can kinda see how it would work in favor of those who already have the rights. So now I am rethinking.. hmm..

@proXXi, I was absolutely serious.

The Fairness Doctrine is a scapegoat for the right to whip up its followers into a frenzy. Nobody has seriously proposed it; it has never been in danger of passing. The only people who talk about it are right-wing radio personalities.

And people who listen to Limbaugh and Beck act exactly like cultists.

Thats odd, I’m not whipped up into a frenzy..

Nobody has seriously proposed it, and it has no danger of passing because it’s too much, too soon. Just like an outright total ban on firearms is too much too soon.

Liberals will have more success if the chip away at true fairness and firearms smaller pieces at a time.

I rarely listen to Limbaugh and Beck because they don’t really tell me anything that I haven’t already observed for myself.

That said, I don’t act like a cultist. I don’t categorically, blindly believe everything these individuals say,

However I can’t deny that nine times out of ten these ‘personalities’ state what seems to be accurate and viable based on my own assesments.

@proXXi, that’s… convenient reasoning that perfectly serves your paranoid delusions.

Maybe conservatives want to pass an “Internet fairness doctrine” banning liberal blogs from only supporting democrats! Of course, no conservatives have ever recently proposed legislation to do this. But that’s because it would be “too much, too soon!” You know that the conservatives are just biding their time, chipping away at liberals’ hold on blogs bit by bit. You don’t know this in your head, of course, but rather in your gut.

Funny, I’m not experiencing paranoia. Paranoia isn’t the same thing as caution.

Oh, nice try mocking one’s trusting ones gut. If your understanding isn’t governed by your individual principles, instinct, and predictions based on history, don’t knock it for others that do.

My understanding is governed by actual facts.

I try to base my principles on actual facts.

I try to channel my “instincts” to react proportionally to the facts of the situation.

I’m not sure what predictions you are even making, or what “history” you are using to make them.

I think you are just demonstrably parroting fearmongering. Like how the left-wingers were so positive that Bush wouldn’t step down in 2008 and would install himself as emperor, based on “history.”

Its okay if you refuse to believe that one could have a calm, levelheaded, skeptical concern about ideas such as the fairness doctrine to serve your purposes. I can handle it.

Remember kids: concern about concepts such as The Fairness Doctrine isn’t radical just because @Qingu suggests it is.

I reviewed my above statements. I don’t see any ‘the sky is falling’ fearmongering. At most I would simply ask that citizens calmy look deeper at issues.

How about this:

We can both agree that The Fairness Doctrine (as we know it) doesn’t have a chance of going through.

Explain to me then how my above statement “It is anything but fair. It would serve to chip away at free speech as well as free markets” is false.

Most most citizens and most politicians already oppose the issue. which is to say it’s a non-issue.

Was it not sufficiently clear that I oppose the fairness doctrine, by the way?

I also oppose slavery. And, despite the fact that a few people in America support it—even politicians like Mike Huckabee who have said they’d like to bring back Biblical law (which supports slavery)—slavery is in no serious danger of ever being reinstated in America. So, if left-wingers constantly bitched and moaned about how “the conservatives are planning to bring back slavery!” I would get just as pissed at them as I am at talk radio bitching about the fairness doctrine.

It is obnoxious, intellectual dishonest, and blatant fearmongering, to constantly and incessantly whine about a doctrine that has no danger of ever passing and pretending for your audience as if it does. Would you agree with that statement?

I took issue with your less than credible first post on the matter. I for one would have simply took you more seriously without hype like ‘boogeyman’ and ‘idiot cultists’.

I see no problem whatsoever with AM talk radio hosts bringing those that would concieve of such unAmerican concepts as The ‘Fairness’ Doctrine the the citizen’s attention.

The problem is that there’s nothing to actually bring to anyone’s attention. Nobody is proposing it. The audience already agrees it would be bad.

So what on earth is the point of constantly talking about it? Please, enlighten me. Because the point seems pretty clear to me.

I believe the more people who know about such destructive ideas the better. Not really complicated.

There’s a big difference between educating people about bad ideas and fearmongering.

We’ve already been over that. Congrats on getting the last word.

No, you never explained how constantly ranting about something that (1) will never happen and (2) your audience is already perfectly familiar with constitutes “education” and not “fearmongering.”

Why shouldn’t radio professionals take the idea of yet more government intrusion into their work personally?

Besides, no radio personality is “constantly ranting” about this issue.

You just wish to peg those of us that are concerned, perhaps even mildly afraid as fearmongers. You get points for effort.

Why shouldn’t radio professionals take the idea of yet more government intrusion into their work personally?

Because it’s not actually going to happen.

Besides, no radio personality is “constantly ranting” about this issue.
I haven’t heard anyone else talk about the fairness doctrine except talk radio conservatives and their fans.

You just wish to peg those of us that are concerned, perhaps even mildly afraid as fearmongers.
No, the fearmongers would be the people trumpeting the fairness doctrine to feed into conservatives’ persecution complex and trump up their narrative of “the liberals are out to get us and take away our freedom.” I don’t actually believe Rush Limbaugh is concerned or afraid, I think he’s a demagogue who makes his living off of playing off of ignorant Americans’ irrational fears and hatreds, and this is one such example.

To put a twist on the discussion, my main problem with any Fairness Doctrine rule is that it presupposes that there are only two sides to every argument, The idea that you are being fair by only showing two sides is false.
The mission of the Fairness Doctrine also seems fruitless. The biggest control media can have over a topic is ignoring it. The Fairness Doctrine did nothing to change that.

What the US has been seeing over the past few days with Sarah Palin is exactly how the Fairness doctrine can be broken down. Oprah, Barbra Walters, etc. are trying to give the impression that they are fair by having a republican on their show, but in reality it is highly damaging to republicans as independents know how shallow that woman is. The Fairness Doctrine would just promote this further.

Of course liberty is the main reason why I oppose it.

@arpinum, that’s a good point. And the “two sides” thing something that is incredibly irritating with the media in general.

For example, there are “two sides” to the argument between evolutionists and creationists. So, many journalists believe they ought to present “equal time” between these two sides for the populace, even though one of those sides is dishonest pseudoscience.

There are “two sides” to the argument that Barack Obama was born in the United States, but one of those sides is batshit crazy.

The media’s job isn’t to find the center of (usually uninformed) opinion. Its job is to find the truth and present it to the public.

Excuse me Sir, but that horse you are beating.. It’s dead.

In this context horses don’t stay dead forever.

For example, Obama has no interest in learning from the out of control bloating of the US government during FDR’s tenure, in fact he aims to repeat it.